We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Saturday, April 30. 2011

That explains it to me. It's the same reason the pols resist Costco in the big blue cities: unions vs. the citizens. Truth is, NYC needs WalMart much more than WalMart needs NYC. WalMart is doing just fine in the US and worldwide. These tough pols and union bosses are making fools of themselves and fools of the voters.

I have no WalMart in my area, but went to Costco this morning to get supplies for church coffee hour tomorrow (cheeses, strawberries, croissants, corn muffins, grapes, vegetables and veggie dip, bagels and cream cheese, etc), and remembered that Gwynnie had told me that they are now selling no-iron dress shirts that are as nice as the Brooks Brothers version at one-third the price. Despite being a loyal and life-long Brooks person, I bought one to try.

“We have an education system that is set up for the ease, comfort and security of those who operate it,” Christie said, urging his audience, many of whom may become leaders of schools, to be “disrupters.” He said they should disrupt “fat, rich and entitled unions” because that’s what’s needed to fix U.S. public schools.

“If you don’t do it we’ve got no hope,” the governor said. “If you’re unwilling to do it, we’re sunk, because you have less to lose than anybody. Take chances. Take a little risk.” Christie received a standing ovation.

This repeated lunge for the sour spot — the place where costs are high and benefits are low — now seems to be a trademark of the President’s decision-making style. On the left it is earning him Carter comparisons from people like Eric Alterman; on the right it means that despite his compromises and yielding of significant ground he continues to feed the incandescent hostility of his bitterest foes. Worst of all, it suggests to people abroad and at home that the way to manipulate this “split the difference”, consensus-seeking President is to raise your demands. If you are going to get something like 50 percent of what you ask for, ask for twice as much as you really want. And with this Presidential style, the squeaking wheel gets the grease. Not surprisingly, all the wheels have begun to squeak.

Here is the paradox we face: The President is a consensus-seeker whose decision making style rewards polarization and a conciliator who loses friends without winning over enemies.

My friend says I was not a good son you understand I say yes I understand

he says I did not go to see my parents very often you know and I say yes I know

even when I was living in the same city he says maybe I would go there once a month or maybe even less I say oh yes

he says the last time I went to see my father I say the last time I saw my father

he says the last time I saw my father he was asking me about my life how I was making out and he went into the next room to get something to give me

oh I say feeling again the cold of my fathers hand the last time he says and my father turned in the doorway and saw me look at my wristwatch and he said you know I would like you to stay and talk with me

oh yes I say

but if you are busy he said I don't want you to feel that you have to just because I'm here

I say nothing

he says my father said maybe you have important work you are doing or maybe you should be seeing somebody I dont want to keep you

I look out the window my friend is older than I am he says and I told my father it was so and I got up and left him then you know

Friday, April 29. 2011

I can tell you that some certainly are, some could care less, and some find it an abomination.

Porn, recreational sex, prostitution, rape, illicit seduction, perversions, etc. have been going on since there have been humans. That's a fact. Humans are endowed with the wackiest sex drives and wackiest imaginations of all animals and, depending on conditions and circumstances, not always the most mature or honorable behavior.

But what about the ladies? A teen gal recently told me that somebody said to her, in the bathroom after a frat party, "I am so pissed that I didn't get any dick tonight." How times have changed. Or have they?

If it’s good, the government should subsidize it. If it’s bad, the government should ban it. If outcomes are in any way perceived by any group to be sub-optimal, then the government should regulate it. Anyone who opposes these bans, subsidies, and regulations must therefore be a supporter of bad outcomes, hate poor people, want people to get sick and die, etc.

Thursday, April 28. 2011

A short time ago, Iran's Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged the Muslim World to boycott anything and everything that originates with the Jewish people.

In response, Meyer M. Treinkman, a pharmacist, out of the kindness of his heart, offered to assist them in their boycott as follows:

"Any Muslim who has Syphilis must not be cured by Salvarsan discovered by a Jew, Dr. Ehrlich. He should not even try to find out whether he has Syphilis, because the Wasserman Test is the discovery of a Jew.If a Muslim suspects that he has Gonorrhea, he must not seek diagnosis, because he will be using the method of a Jew named Neissner.

"A Muslim who has heart disease must not use Digitalis, a discovery by a Jew, Ludwig Traube.

Should he suffer with a toothache, he must not use Novocaine, a discovery of the Jews, Widal and Weil.

If a Muslim has Diabetes, he must not use Insulin, the result of research by Minkowsky, a Jew. If one has a headache, he must shun Pyramidon and Antypyrin, due to the Jews, Spiro and Ellege.

Muslims with convulsions must put up with them because it was a Jew, Oscar Leibreich, who proposed the use of Chloral Hydrate.

Arabs must do likewise with their psychic ailments because Freud, father of psychoanalysis, was a Jew.

Should a Muslim child get Diphtheria, he must refrain from the "Schick" reaction which was invented by the Jew, Bella Schick.

"Muslims should be ready to die in great numbers and must not permit treatment of ear and brain damage, work of Nobel Prize winner, Robert Baram.

They should continue to die or remain crippled by Infantile Paralysis because the discoverer of the anti-polio vaccine is a Jew, Jonas Salk.

"Muslims must refuse to use Streptomycin and continue to die of Tuberculosis because a Jew, Zalman Waxman, invented the wonder drug against this killing disease.

Muslim doctors must discard all discoveries and improvements by dermatologist Judas Sehn Benedict, or the lung specialist, Frawnkel, and of many other world renowned Jewish scientists and medical experts.

It kind of sucks in my business, which is one which is not usually very optional. We have not hired for over two years and have laid off quite a few professionals and assistants. Do I see a re-do of Carter's stagflation?

Are you and I machines? Are we analyzable without remainder into a collection of mechanisms whose operation can be fully explained by the causal operation of physical and chemical laws, starting from the parts and proceeding to the whole? It might seem so, judging from the insistent testimony of those whose work is to understand life.

There is little doubt about the biologist’s declared obsession with mechanisms of every sort — “genetic mechanisms,” “epigenetic mechanisms,” “regulatory mechanisms,” “signaling mechanisms,” “oncogenic mechanisms,” “immune mechanisms,” “circadian clock mechanisms,” “DNA repair mechanisms,” “RNA splicing mechanisms,” and even “molecular mechanisms of plasticity.” The single phrase “genetic mechanism” now yields over 25,000 hits in Google Scholar and the count seems to be rising by hundreds per month. But no cellular entity or process is exempt; everything has been or will be baptized a “mechanism.” In an informal analysis of technical papers I’ve collected, I found an average of 7.5 uses of mechanism per article, with the number in a single article varying from 1 to 32. This is not even counting cognate forms such as mechanistic and machine.

Using mechanical metaphors probably sounded advanced, and scientifically anti-vitalistic 100 years ago, but now it seems quaint. The metaphors we use are important, because they tend to be reified by people outside a given field of expertise.

We easily forget that vitalism was a metaphor, like phlogiston. Our next batch of metaphors for everything will be systems-oriented, until the next new thing comes along.

h/t Insty, who has been doing a heck of a job lately. I have never understood why people who view themselves as my betters seem to want to control me and my way of life. What motivates that desire for control?

It doesn’t take long, though, for a visitor to discover St. Aloysius’s most powerful asset: the rich content of its classroom instruction. St. Aloysius exemplifies the old-fashioned notion that school is a place where children learn about our civilization’s shared knowledge and values and where teachers remain the undisputed authorities in the classroom, imparting that knowledge and those values through a coherent grade-by-grade curriculum. This traditional approach has stood the test of time and is still proving itself today in many inner-city Catholic schools, in the “no excuses” charter schools operated by the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), in schools that have adopted E. D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge curriculum, and, to some extent, even in run-of-the-mill Massachusetts public schools that adhere to that state’s back-to-basics curriculum reforms (see “E. D. Hirsch’s Curriculum for Democracy,” Autumn 2009).

It sounds like going to writing class today is like going to shop class and learning about the oppression of the worker instead of how to use a lathe. Might be useful if you want to become a Community Organizer, but not if you ever want to make anything.

What a fine distraction from the hassles of life. They can swallow good-sized bones now. They just devoured a crow, and it's sorta cool the way they know how to shoot their poops off the edge of the nest:

The O was born in Hawaii. I think the O is toying with the Birthers, playing them for fools. As for his grades, they probably did suck because he was a stoner. But graduating summa from HLS means something.

...deluded about what can be accomplished through mere professions of powerlessness, and advertising their fears as if they were virtues, those who guide the fortunes of the world’s only superpower have embarked upon an experiment in virtual demilitarization.

Tuesday, April 26. 2011

Serious gardeners in New England, especially food-gardeners, build coldframes to extend the growing season. Properly done, you can add at least a month to the growing season for some things.

I used to mess with things like that, but I don't bother anymore. If I lived in Maine, though, I'd definitely have a coldframe full of spinach, leaf lettuces, etc.

I've even tried putting tomatoes out in late April here, but it never works out. Milk jugs, polyurethane, etc. Big hassle. Fact is, around here, if you put them out in late May they quickly catch up to the early birds, and even exceed them because they have endured no cool weather stresses. Tomatoes do not really put on growth without warm nights - above 55 F. We are still in the 30s on some nights.

If you have money to burn, the best thing is a good-sized real greenhouse. I would attach one to the house, with interior and exterior doors, so you could just open the door and let the rich earthy and flower and herb and plant smells infuse the house. Home-grown Beefsteak tomatoes 12 months/year.

Pic is Beefsteaks, the only tomato I truly enjoy eating, especially when hot from the sun. We usually only get a few weeks of them ripening, mid-late August-early September. Is it worth the trouble? For me, it is. It is especially pleasant when you can find a big ripe one that a squirrel or chipmunk has not taken a bite out of.